John McDonnell MP to address campaign this Thursday 20 Dec at Birkbeck Bar 5pm

18 Nov 08 Press release from the London Living Wage campaign at Birkbeck College

EVENT: MP John McDonnell to address 20 NOV 08 public meeting

John McDonnell, MP for Hayes & Harlington, will speak at a public meeting held by the Birkbeck College London Living Wage (LLW) campaign on Thursday November 20th at 5pm in the Birkbeck Bar, on the 4th floor of the main Birkbeck College building in Malet Street, Bloomsbury London WC1E 7HX. The campaign is sponsored by the Birkbeck students union and the College trade unions Unison, Unite and UCU.

map: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/maps

McDonnell, a politics graduate from the College, is a strong advocate of the campaign to pay London workers more to meet the rising costs of living and working in London. He will be joined by speaker Jose Stalin Bermudez, Chair, SOAS Unison. Low income SOAS workers won their own Living Wage Campaign last academic year. (SOAS LLW Info: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/unison/slwc/news.htm)

The Greater London Authority under Ken Livingstone initiated the campaign for all London workers. The LLW is set at £7.45 per hour and defined as ‘the threshhold at which people can live above the poverty level in London with a sufficient safety net to also provide for quality of life’.

Mayor Boris Johnson also supports the campaign, and the GLA is a Living Wage employer.

Birkbeck’s low-paid catering & cleaning staff are currently paid by contractors at the national minimum wage of £5.73 per hour. Benefits such as sick pay and annual leave are set at the legal minimum and workers have no recognised trade union to defend their interests. Meanwhile other University of London colleges such as Queen Mary, LSE and SOAS have agreed to pay the London Living Wage to their staff.

The College's mission statement is to 'Provide part-time higher education courses which meet the changing educational, cultural, personal and career needs of adults; in particular those who live or work in the London region.'

The campaign therefore asks why Birkbeck, being the one College within the greater University of London geared towards improving the job prospects of working students, is not prepared to pay London workers on its premises a decent, dignified living wage.

Additionally, the campaign will hold a protest rally outside the College Governors meeting on Wednesday December 3rd (also in the main Malet st building) at 5pm to publicise this injustice. See website and further press release for details.

contact us: 07092 846 053, livingwage@unions.bbk.ac.uk and www.bbk.ac.uk/unison/local/living and look for us on Facebook.